Quotes of the day

posted at 9:01 pm on November 27, 2013 by Allahpundit

Another city, another fundraiser. Again, “Hail to the Chief” played, and again, President Obama opened with his routine act: “It’s good to be back in San Francisco! Love this place!” He recognized the outstanding mayor and outstanding members of Congress and outstanding attorney general in attendance.

Then the president got introspective. “Sometimes people ask me, how do you keep up with everything involved in this job of yours, which is kind of a crazy job?” Obama said. “There’s a lot of stuff, and it’s all pretty complicated, and nobody is ever entirely happy with any decision that you make, and your hair is a lot grayer than it used to be.”

The president said his days start with great promise, but by the time they end, he looks at his to-do list and feels overwhelmed: “Man, we’ve still got a long way to go.”

***

“Kindness covers all of my political beliefs,” Obama told his audience of wealthy investors, high-tech donors, journalists and fellow Democrats Tuesday, only two months after he slashed at GOP legislators, calling them arsonists, nuclear blackmailers, economic wreckers, hostage-takers, obsessives and irresponsible extremists.

“When I think about what I’m fighting for, what gets me up every single day, [kindness] captures it just about as much as anything,” he told his audience at the DreamWorks studio in Glendale, Calif., which he visited as part of a seven-stop fundraising trip.

“Kindness; empathy — that sense that I have a stake in your success,” said Obama, who told supporters during the November election “Don’t boo. Vote. Voting is the best revenge.”

***

The website is a mess because the program is a mess. As Mom used to say, “What starts out twisted stays twisted.” The president oversold the benefits of the website just as he oversold how painless the entire law was going to be. He thought he could get away saying that if you liked your insurance you would be able to keep it. Why? Because he assumed the people who didn’t like their old plans would love their freshly minted Obamacare plans. Guess what, they don’t. Now he’s had to spin like mad—including making the estimates of coverage on the website look better than they are—and modify parts of the law by delaying the employer mandate and open enrollment next year. He faces a fundamental problem: The federal government can’t take on a project of this size. That’s why 56 percent of the public doesn’t agree with the underlying goal that every American should have health insurance, a record high.

Another nightmare is coming: People won’t be able to keep their doctor the way the president promised either. That’s because, in an effort to keep costs down, insurance companies are slashing doctor payments and limiting the number of doctors they will cover.

It’s called the Affordable Care Act, but according to, the Kaiser Family Foundation premiums in 2014 will likely be higher in most states. Even if they can get the website moving again, the law faces a slew of hurdles—the beleaguered IRS has to oversee the enforcement, next year those companies with more than 50 employees who were given a one-year reprieve from the mandate will be forced to join, and the system for paying insurers for “risk corridors” hasn’t been worked out. But this is about more than a health care law. This was the president’s signature legislative accomplishment. His team had three years to prepare, and even though many involved knew it was going to collapse on launch and tests just before the launch failed to handle 500 users, they went ahead anyway. Health care inflation may be down, but that’s because 77 percent of that cost decrease comes from the recession, not a law that was passed in 2010.

***

6) Once you’re able to get onto the website, you’ll have plenty of cheaper/better choices and be able to qualify for a subsidy.

No, you probably won’t. While the subsidies are generous for people on the lowest income end, many people – even low-income people – will be surprised to find how little the subsidy hides the aforementioned growth in premiums or how expensive the new plans are. And the rate shock they perceive for those premiums will likely be deceptive as well, as ProPublica notes here, because of the increases in deductibles and out-of-pocket co-pays associated with the new policies. Polling data thus far shows one of the major reasons people are coming to the website but not selecting a plan is because they’re surprised by the costs. For many people, $190 a month is absolutely affordable – but for those who weren’t buying insurance when it was $160 a month, they’re balking.

7) When people get covered under Obamacare, they’ll start liking the new system because they’ll get the same health care, but cheaper.

No, they probably won’t get what they expect. While I am amazed by how much the administration has bungled the rollout of the law, the real Achilles’ heel from my perspective has always been the second round of hits: the doc shock as people learn about the newly restricted networks under the plans offered via the exchanges. Many states have one insurer with dominant, near-monopoly market share, and in these states not having a critical hospital in the network can be a major problem for the ill. The best hospitals in the country – the Mayo Clinic, Cedars-Sinai, and other such household names – are typically also the most expensive hospitals in an insurer’s network. This means that the quickest way to be able to make a plan that is solvent under Obamacare’s regulatory model is to drop some of these expensive hospitals and systems from your plans. This is going to hit the sickest Americans hardest, as stories like this one show.

***

The technocratic idea is that you put a bunch of smart, competent people in government — folks who really want the thing to work — and they’ll make it happen. But “smart, competent people” are not a generic quantity; they’re incredibly domain-specific. Most academics couldn’t run a lemonade stand. Most successful entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to muster the monomaniacal devotion needed to get a Ph.D. Neither group produces many folks who can consistently generate readable, engaging writing on a deadline. And none of us would be able to win a campaign for Congress.

The policy people handed out impossible orders to the technical staff; when the technical staff couldn’t deliver their impossibility, they decided that the problem was incompetence. This percolated all the way down the line, and quite probably back up again — why bother explaining things if the people you’re doing the explaining to are idiots?

***

t the end of the day, the root of President Obama’s mendacity on Obamacare was simple: He didn’t dare tell people how the law would work. He couldn’t tell people how the law would work…

If this is the only way to pass your signature initiative—and a decades-long goal of your party—it ought to give you pause. But Obama was a natural at delivering sweeping and sincere-seeming assurances that weren’t true. This kind of thing is his métier.

If he were awoken at 3 a.m. and told he had to make the case for nationalizing the banks by denying he was nationalizing the banks, he would do an entirely creditable job of it, even without a TelePrompTer. The salesmanship for Obamacare represents in microcosm the larger Obama political project, which has always depended on throwing a reassuring skein of moderation on top of left-wing ideological aims.

***

The CNN results amplify Obama’s political problem: The Affordable Care Act imbroglio is having an outsized effect on his entire presidency, with voters reassessing his basic qualifications. “This is serious,” says Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist and former chief of staff to Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. “This is much more serious than I hear some Democrats saying publicly. This is not a temporary drop.”

Adds John Geer, an expert on public opinion at Vanderbilt University, “In a sense, the public was collectively willing to be patient. That reservoir of support among independents and moderates has evaporated.”

For weeks, Democrats have hewn to the party line, arguing that once the website woes are repaired and people can enroll easily, the political climate will improve. And Kofinis is in that lot: “Fixing it will help turn it around. But not overnight. It’s a lot easier to fall—a lot harder to come back.”

“I believe that health care reform will be the right thing for the country . . . It certainly wasn’t the smart ‘political’ thing! And I hope that in the months to come, you will keep an open mind and evaluate it based not on the political attacks but on what it does or doesn’t do to improve people’s lives. Sincerely, Barack Obama.”

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If we’re going to live we need something to do. I’m off, my preparations are all preparated, I’m out of lemonade, and my guests don’t show til tomorrow. So let’s play a game. I call it: Axe’s 21. (No relation to the failed porn site I tried to launch.)

By the way, wouldn’t you say that most of us feel more hopeful about the state of national politics today than we did exactly one year ago?

I was actually rather depressed for weeks after the last election. It felt like I was living in a daze. There was so much buildup and I was so anticipating the election night, and the result was so cruel. And it was just all over like that. I had taken pictures of my filled-in ballot with my phone. Now when I look at those photos, I feel sad. And also a little conflicted when I see Paul Ryan’s name, considering how he is pushing amnesty now. I am almost somewhat glad he didn’t get in there.

Anyway, darn it, we are going to turn this around! I really think conservatives and tea partiers are going to be fired up next time in ways they went in 2012. Don’t underestimate the patriotic Americans who aren’t going to give up so easily on our country.

“Psssst. Psssst! John! John!Over here! –Yes, I know, it’s terrible. The b@stards got Jenny and Scott. We should have seen this coming. Maybe it’s over, we thought. Maybe it’s finally over. And what’s it been, a year? Not a sound. And here they are again, out of –John! Run! Run!”

NEW YORK (AP) — The fate of Spider-Man, SpongeBob SquarePants and Snoopy rests in the hands of the New York Police Department.

The 16 giant balloons that fly between Manhattan skyscrapers during the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade may be grounded if windy conditions from a storm that snarled holiday travel along the East Coast pick up Thursday morning — and the final determination will be made by the NYPD.

The iconic characters cannot lift off if sustained winds top 23 mph and gusts exceed 34 mph, according to city rules enacted after fierce winds in 1997 caused a Cat in the Hat balloon to topple a light pole and seriously injure a spectator. Balloons have only been grounded once in the parade’s 87-year history, when bad weather kept them from flying in 1971.
(More…)
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1. Now thank we all our God
With heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom His world rejoices;
Who from our mother’s arms
Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.

2. Oh, may this bounteous God
Through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts
And blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace
And guide us when perplexed
And free us from all ills
In this world and the next.

3. All praise and thanks to God
The Father now be given,
The Son, and Him who reigns
With them in highest heaven:
The one eternal God,
Whom earth and heaven adore!
For thus it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.

During Thanksgiving give thanks to the government for what it has distributed to you. All conscientious members of community are required to experience (a) deep gratitude to the Party and its leader; (b) unworthiness in the face of the glorious state; (c) guilt for consuming according to their needs and not giving back enough according to their abilities. The non-compliant will have their belongings redistributed to the more worthy members of the community.

Two ungenerous thoughts to throw upon the collective wisdom of HA before I go get happy:
1) Is it customary for a President to mock the cross when pardoning a turkey? I realize he ‘didn’t mean anything by it’, he was just trying to be cool, he was getting his fawners to laugh, he was trying to keep his kids from saying what a dork he is ( as all kids do); so I ask a reasonable and knowledgeable audience–is the hand and the sign of the cross really a part of ANY Presidential pardon? Or just the turkey’s? Should we blame it on Bush?

2) I actually thought his Thanksgiving pronouncement was good, though a little more sincerity could have strengthened the act. But he never once said who we are thankful TO, other than our Armed Forces (at least he left out the social workers and other neighborhood bureaucrats this time.) Mr. President, thanksgiving is not an introspective attitude. It is an EXPRESSION of a thankful attitude directed to the Almighty from whom all blessings flow.

Time to gather the brood and be thankful for stuffing, talk about healthcare and potentially compromised identities and suing the federal government. Time to write our doctor friends and thank them for treating us off the books in exchange for pizza. All the way, of course.

1. Come, ye thankful people, come;
Raise the song of Harvest-home.
All be safely gathered in
Ere the winter storms begin;
God, our Maker, doth provide
For our wants to be supplied,
Come to God’s own temple, come;
Raise the song of Harvest-home.

2. All the world is God’s own field,
Fruit unto His praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown,
Unto joy or sorrow grown;
First the blade and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear.
Lord of harverst, grant that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.

3. For the Lord, our God, shall come
And shall take His harvest home;
From His field shall in that day
All offences purge away;
Give His angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast,
But the fruitful ears to store
In His garner evermore.

In case there is a later Thanksgiving thread and I miss it, I wish everyone to have a blessed day with family and friends. Be thankful. We still live in a country with great possibilities. They start with us and the grace of an awesome God.

Happy Thanksgiving – the President is pardoning an ancestor (he is as smart as a Turkey, who drowns if left out in the rain). But, remember, consuming our traditional turkey feast, will cause U.S. to go into a Triptafain induced comma that we will not wake up from, it is not covered by his “Affordable Care Act”. Remember, eat meat.